The The was always a personal project for songwriter Matt Johnson. Started in 1979, when Johnson was a teenager, the post-punk outfit became central to the political and personal pop scenes of the 1980s. Band members included Johnny Marr and DC Collard, with other collaborators including JG Thirlwell, Jools Holland, Andrew Poppy, Neneh Cherry, Zeke Manyika and Sinead O’Connor.

 

A reluctant live musician, Johnson created Infected: The Movie instead of a world tour in 1986. The Mind Bomb band, including Marr and Eller, launched the 1989-90 The The vs The World tour. Johnson appeared to retire following 2000’s Naked Self, although he kept busy, with a sideways move into scoring movies. It wasn’t until 2018 that The The returned to playing live and this was followed in 2024 with the new album, Ensoulment and its accompanying tour, almost a quarter of a century after the band’s last recorded music. 

 

This edition of On Track provides an insightful analysis of a mysterious band.

 

The Author

 

Brian J. Robb is the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling biographer of Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, and Brad Pitt. He has also written books on silent cinema, the films of Philip K. Dick, Wes Craven, Laurel and Hardy, the Star Wars movies, Superheroes, Gangsters, and Walt Disney, as well as science fiction television series Doctor Who and Star Trek, and Depeche Mode for Sonicbond Publishing. His illustrated books include an Illustrated History of Steampunk and Middle-Earth Envisioned, a guide to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (Winner, Best Book, Tolkien Society Awards). He is a Founding Editor of the Sci-Fi Bulletin website and lives near Edinburgh, UK.